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There seems to be a small movement by Republican lawmakers to put legal pressure on the excesses of woke universities.
The STEM Scott writes about several bills up for consideration in the Texas state senate:
Florida is considering a similar bill, HB 999, that would place restrictions on DEI-related initiatives and majors at public universities. Already the effects are being felt at SLACs like the New College:
I'm in a bit of an odd place with regards to these issues. I don't fit neatly onto the woke "how dare you attack our most hallowed and sacred institutions!" side, nor the anti-woke "stop teaching this pinko commie crap to our kids!" side.
I really do have an almost naive faith in free speech for all, even for my worst enemies. Despite being an avowed rightist, I not only want leftists to be able to speak, but I want them to be platformed! I want to help you get the word out! I think our public life really should play host to a diversity of viewpoints. I think the university should be a hothouse of strange and controversial ideas. By all means, keep teaching CRT and women's studies and black studies and whatever else you want. I know that leftists don't extend the same courtesy to me, but that doesn't invalidate the fundamental point that I should extend that courtesy to them. Even just beyond extending formal charity to my political outgroup, I actually enjoy a lot of this type of scholarship and I find value in it, I like Marxist literary criticism and the obscurantist mid-20th century French guys and German phenomenology and all the rest of it, and I think it should continue to be taught and studied on its own merits, even if I don't necessarily agree with the politics.
But! It really is hard sometimes. When things like this happen, when a book chapter that was, by all accounts, a completely anodyne explication of the official party ideology, whose only crime was that it didn't go far enough in advocating the abolition of all gendered pronouns, is met with public humiliation and a tarnishing of the reputation of the author... it does make my blood boil and it's hard to maintain my principles. It makes me want to go "ok, yeah screw it, ban all liberal arts programs at universities, I don't care, whatever, I just want these people to lose." I'm on their side on a lot of the key object-level issues and I still want them to lose! That's why I constantly feel like I'm of two minds on these questions.
In spite of all the problems with the modern university, I still think it's important that we have at least one institution that acts as a countervailing force to utilitarian profit-maximizing techbroism. The university as it stands now leaves a lot to be desired. But if the choice is between the university we have now, or nothing, I'll stick with the university.
For coursework specifically, I don't think there's much meat. Yes, in some theoretical perfect environment researchers and teachers would go after their own esoteric Truths; in the real world, Actual Nobel-winning PhDs in Hard Science have slapfights over superconductor magnetic flux charts.
It's already been the case -- and long been the case -- where progressive!Racist speech or classwork by even tenured professors (even off-campus and off-the-clock!) not only could but must result in firing, lest the entire school be held responsible. While I'd quibble with the borders of what's included in that definition, I don't think it does (or should) require people to abandon prohibitions on actual!racism.
Maybe the soccons will overstep those bounds. I wouldn't be surprised! When they start going after private organizations on campuses, I'll try to link directly to this post when I start raising the black flag. But I don't get what's happening here that is any more than a formalization, if that, of the last fifty-plus years.
Can you link some examples of what you're talking about here?
Mark McPhail is another racist-from-the-left one, and there's been a handful of sexuality or gender-related ones involving small private (and usually religious) orgs. They're usually not done within the legal framework I was mentioning, but they are objectionable on their own merits.
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I don't think the entire chain has happened in one particular spot, but John McAdams at UPenn was 'suspended indefinitely without pay' over blog posts (overturned years later for contract reasons), while Amy Wax is going through the process so they can get rid of her and not have to pay out afterward. On the process side, they're mostly incentivized by Title VI and Title IX matters, with a scattering of other broad and vague laws that have been regularly used as justification to block speech.
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